Today's business people travelers have almost continuous access to either a cellular or a conventional telephone in any given stage of travel. The telephone is often the most convenient and efficient method of communication between the business travelers and their clients. Frequently, traveling business people also need to collaborate with the home organization and with clients, vendors, and business partners.
The conference call has become an increasingly popular tool among business people. However, as the popularity and use of conference calls has increased, so has the opportunity for unauthorized users to listen to a conference call. The prior art has disclosed a variety of devices which are designed to prevent unauthorized access to a conference call. These devices attach to a telephone and identify the telephone user as an authorized participant to a conference call. One problem with this approach is that the conference call participant must call from the telephone with the security device. Another problem with this approach is that there is no way to determine if the person using the security device is in fact the authorized participant. Moreover, the authorized participant may be excluded from the conference call if he attempts to connect to the conference call via his cellular telephone instead of his office telephone. Thus, the prior art only discloses security methods which are specific to a user's telephone or device rather than to the user himself. Therefore, a need exists for an apparatus and method of providing security to a conference call which is specific to a user instead of a user's telephone.
Additionally, those who use conference calls as a method of doing business are frequently hindered by the fact that they may need to confer privately with another participant during the conference call. This is frequently the case when an attorney, his client, another party, and the other party's attorney are all participating in a conference call. Another example is when an arbitration or mediation meeting is conducted via a conference call. Here it is useful for the arbitrator or mediator to exclude certain parties from a portion of the conference call in an attempt to broker an agreement between a plurality of parties. As there is currently no method for limiting the parties to a conference call as such, a need exists for a method of selectively excluding conference call participants from a conference call.